Developing a Social Media Program – Social Media Integration (Step IV)

We’re back!

Hopefully, this means you’re finding this series useful.  (Either that or you’re on a really painful conference call.  It can’t be for my jokes.)

To those of you who have been following my blog series, Developing a Social Media Program,   if this is your first visit to my blog then you may wish to go back to the beginning before starting this post but as each article is designed to be standalone, feel free to stay here!  (The earlier posts will still be out there!)

In this post, I’ll define the fourth component of developing a social media program, Social Media Integration.  This is the fourth of the eight posts I’ll be blogging about separately.

By now, you have decided on goals and objectives, which social media applications to use (including a blog), and how to use them to achieve these goals and objectives.  The social media identity has been normalized and the building of a community to interact with has been addressed.

Before going any further, I want to talk about this particular component which can be of short duration and limited effort but nonetheless is of critical importance.  This is where we ensure that the message – the content – we will be posting is consistent and complete across all social media applications.

A social media program uses apps such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.  A blog can also be considered part of the portfolio.  Each may have a separate audience.  Your message must be posted across all these in the manner permitted, and remain the same.

The first task is to ensure that all social media apps used cross-promote the others.  Wherever possible, buttons should be used to allow readers to either follow you or to share your content.

Second, posts should be cross-promoted automatically across all social media apps as appropriate.  I say as appropriate because posting all your tweets to LinkedIn may not be desirable.  (Tweets can no longer be automatically posted to LinkedIn anyway.)

Third, maintain a common look and feel across your social media apps.  Visitors and followers should not feel as if they’ve landed on another individual’s or organization’s app.  The second component of a social media program, Normalizing the Social Media Identity, addressed the visual. Here, we address the tone, the style of writing, and the content.  You should have one voice.  (At least, I’ve never been successful trying to juggle multiple personalities.  I have enough difficulty with the one I’ve got.)  Also, ensuring that cross-promotions occur in a timely fashion to avoid misleading followers.

Your voice should be the same from post to post across all content on all apps.  Humor, remorse, aggravation, and even irritation may influence your voice (Just don’t get carried away!) but your message must always be the same.  You must be authentic.

Finally, check that your message is consistent, not contradictory, and doesn’t get out of sync.  We can change our minds on positions we took earlier.  There’s no shame to say we’ve changed our minds or made a mistake.  However, we leave ourselves open to criticism and embarrassment if we correct ourselves in one app but neglect to do so in all the others.  Timeliness is critical in these situations.

Let’s recap.

We have now added an approach to integrate our social media apps to a plan of action to grow a community of interest around our social media program which was addressed in the third step.

At the end of the second step, the social media program has incorporated a personal brand onto the apps and developed a common profile and enhanced for keyword searches.

With the first step, I discussed how goals and objectives influence the social media app choices available.  Then the importance of having a blog and the options available for setting one up were reviewed.

We now know what we want to do and how we’re going to do it.

But, a social media program is not a static event, a fire and forget activity.

In the next article, Content Creation, I will discuss how to source, create, and post content.  Maintaining an editorial calendar will also be addressed.

There are eight steps summarizing for me how to initiate, maintain, and improve a social media program.  Each of these represents tasks and interim deliverables.  Third party tools are available to assist with these and enhance the social media apps themselves.  This ongoing series in my blog will discuss these.

In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog!

I look forward to any and all comments that you may have.  I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.

Remember!

I do this for a living and if I can be of any assistance to either you or your organization, please feel free to call on me.  Our initial discussion will be of no charge to you.

I can also be reached at conpsweeney@someddi.com.

My Twitter handle is @conpsweeney.

Stay well!